Four tips for executing a successful content marketing strategy for the rental housing marketplace.
“Location, Location, Location.”
You’ve all heard it, it’s been seared into your minds for years as the mantra of the multifamily housing market. And while it still is strong in some sectors, there’s a new mantra to get on board with in the apartment marketing world: “Content is king.”
Top 4 Media Channels for Your Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing involves creating and sharing relevant material for a targeted online audience. It consists of all things online aimed at drawing and retaining customers — blogs, videos, live feeds, social media, geotargeting — and in a world where the vast majority of prospective residents do most of their apartment search online, it’s arguably more important to focus your energies on your content than boasting your location.
Content marketing can be done through a wide variety of media. Here are just a few to keep top of mind so your property can stay competitive:
1. Social media (and not just a Facebook Page).
If your property has Facebook and Instagram —you have the very basics covered. While it’s important to stay current with the types of social media you engage, it’s equally as important to be purposeful with when and what you post online so you draw the right audience and increase traffic, brand awareness and attention.
Create a posting schedule: Hootsuite, Buffer, Falcon, HubSpot and SharpSpring are just a few of many online resources that can help you stay intentional with your social media. Many online resources will allow you to combine your sites for efficiency.
As far as what you should post, be sure to include a variety of information that will be attractive to the audience you want to reach. Touting your amenities, adding links to local happenings, sharing details about walkable venues and extending invites to your own property events are a few great ways to keep your social media variable and interesting.
2. Blogs
HubSpot lists numerous reasons that posting several blogs per month can increase your traffic each month. Blogs can be free-form but should also be intentional to attract your target audience. Use your blog to expand the mind of your readers by giving them loft-decorating tips, providing space saving ideas for their studio apartment, introducing them to the best cocktails in your area or sharing fitness plans for your new on-demand fitness room.
By giving residents and prospects ideas about their apartment home and local area, or providing advice to improve their living experience, you are engaging your audience and drawing them closer to what you have to offer. Include links to your other social media pages, and clickable photos to draw prospective residents back to you.
3. Infographics and Videos
A picture is worth a thousand words. If you include an image in your blog post every 100 words, readers are twice as likely to engage with the post. According to Hubspot, more users look at infographics than read text, but visual content increases the viewer’s willingness to read the associated text.
Further, they are far more likely to share your post if it contains something visual, and visual content ensures they will remember what they read several days later. Be intentional about including live videos during a property event, artistic photos of your amenities, video tours of your floorplans and colorful infographics in your marketing to keep your audience not only interested for themselves, but to ensure they share with their networks.
4. Geotargeting
Each time you download an app on your phone, you’re asked to turn on location services. Apps can use location-based technology to suggest local attractions or events you might be interested in based on your recent searches. Multifamily marketers can use this technology to push ads to prospective renters who are driving past your property, visiting local hotspots near you or those who work in your area.
It’s no surprise that most people get directions, recommendations and other information related to location from their smartphones. By tracking this data, apartment marketers can learn where and how their targeted audience spends their time.
By adding your property’s address and profile to a map on the Waze directional app, you’ll reach millions of drivers daily. If your property is in a mixed-use development, you can use a Beacon to send notifications advertising a rental discount to people shopping or dining nearby.
By embracing this multifamily mantra and seeing content marketing as the king of your marketing strategy, you will position your property to reach further online, drawing far more potential residents to your site and ultimately, to your door.
Ashley Tyndall is Director of Business Development for Criterion.B.